


her hair reminds me of a warm, safe place.

by moonny



Series: Lover. [2]
Category: Jurassic World - Fandom
Genre: Drabble, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-04 19:53:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21203156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonny/pseuds/moonny
Summary: Post-fallen kingdom. "Is this our life now? Is this our new normal?"





	her hair reminds me of a warm, safe place.

** MAISIE LOCKWOOD, TEN YEARS OLD,** stirs restlessly over the threadbare, leathery backseat of his Jeep Grand Wagoneer; her cheeks are red, tearfully wet, but she shuts her wept-swollen eyes tightly and wavers through a painful tightrope-balance between consciousness and oblivion. Every thirty-four seconds, Owen glances into the rearview mirror, watching the girl through the reflective glass, huddled and tense, swallowed by the shadows and the brief flash of headlights beaming forth from cars rolling through the opposite sides of the interstate, speeding by.

0400 hours. He has been driving for six hours, at a steady speed of sixty-four miles per hour. From San Diego, California, to Phoenix, Arizona, where his airstream sits inside the acre-wide homestead of a half-finished cabin.

He couldn’t leave her. _Wouldn’t._ Owen had looked at her, small, doe-eyed, achingly _young,_ and he couldn’t. He had seen it in her eyes, the rheumy, glasslike** fear,** the future; hours and hours of questioning by local authorities; alone in a grey, stale room full of strangers. There will be no official records of her existence. Worse, there will be the _truth,_ discovered——- contemptible, shameful and beyond her control, beyond her _consent._

She doesn’t deserve that. She is a** living, breathing child,** and she doesn’t deserve that.

Claire’s eyes are shiny; in the dark, they almost seem to glitter, lightning-blue, catching the faint lights emanating from the fuel gauge and tunable radio, like fireflies in a jar. She removes her jacket, and carefully pulls it over Maisie. In her sleep, the little girl’s face untwists.

“Is this our life now? Is this our new normal?”

Claire looks at him, expectant, hopeful, because he always seems to have some wry, quippish remark that makes everything feel… lighthearted, as if they were in some ridiculous children’s story and he was the _witty one-liner on two legs._ He was confident. He was brave. He makes everything seem like it will be _okay._

In the dark, in the night, something screeches above them. Distant. Inevitable. 

“Here,” he tells her, reaches for her hand. The jeep slows, slower, stops. Tires crunch over gravel and dust along the highway’s shoulder. The heavy, wide set of his palm settles over Claire’s fist, curled tensely over her knee. Owen offers her a measured stare, and his expression looks the way a warm, soft embrace feels. “You drive.”


End file.
